Except It Be For Fornication

Matthew 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

Do we as Mormons just completely ignore this verse? Our Handbook of Instructions does not say anything that would change this, and I know of no revelation or First Presidency announcements that counteract this. We probably all know somebody at church or in our family that have divorced for something other than “fornication” [1]. I have a family member that not only divorced, but got a cancellation of sealing by the First Presidency. No fornication was involved.

How does the church justify this? Do we just pretend it is not there? It was part of the Come Follow Me scriptures for this week, but we have Stake Conference today, so my ward gets a pass on hearing my snarky comments on this. How did your SS class handle this verse?

Maybe it was mistranslated? Nope, the JST says pretty much the exact same thing, except for dropping the “it be” [2].

I’m sure this has been covered in some Institute manual at some time. But I’ve not found it. So let’s crowd source this: Have you ever in your church experience heard a any explanation on why the LDS church completely ignores a direct quote from Jesus? Are there any other directions from Christ that we LDS ignore?

[1] While today we define fornication as sex between the unmarried, I think we can all agree that in this case it means sex outside of marriage.

[2] The words in the KJV that are in italics are words that were added in English to make the original Greek more readable, but those words were not in the original. Joseph Smith understood this, so in his “translation” he omitted them in several places

I don’t think that there is a definitive answer but I am aware of two possible explanations .

The first is that this needs to be taken contextualy. The explanation is that this statement was made in a society where the husband held all the power. A man could be angry at his wife and, by a word, eliminate her from his life, feeling like he’d solved all of his problems while devastating hers (she’d lose her children, her income, everything in one fell swoop, with no recourse). So , this explanation goes, this was given to curtail egregious harm to women.

The second is that this is a higher law, like the practice of ‘“having all things in common” that is mentioned early in the Book of Acts and which we also are not currently required to live (though there was an attempt in the early modern church history).. The idea behind this explanation is that maintaining a marriage in spite of difficulities and misunderstandings and sin requires a level of righteousness, humility, kindness, forgiveness, repentance , generosity and selflessness that is, for whatever reasons, currently beyond the ability or vision of a significant portion of the Christian population. This explanation maintains that if Christian couples were more capable of living at that level of righteousness then the admonishment to avoid divorce unless there had been serious infidelity would foster the possibility of husbands and wives repairing their marriages instead of divorcing. But, it says, we are generally not, as a people, and as couples, not to mention as a society, living at that level of righteousness yet. Therefore we have been given a lesser law to prevent further egregious harm in marriages that, left intact, will, due to the choices made by one or both partners, continue to spiral downwards and become more wicked and damaging.

Other “not currently lived directives” just off the top of my head: “Sell all thou hast and give to the poor”, “shake the dust off thy feet”, “without purse or scrip”, I suspect other readers may come up with others.

I think Mary B has a great point, that in its original culture this scripture could be seen to protect women from being left destitute on the whim of a man who deserts her.

This passage has a different effect today. First, women are no longer protected by it because we tend to make most scriptures gender neutral – a woman may be equally blamed for putting away her husband. Second, because we have a legal structure to help dissolve marriages, women are not supposed to be left penniless and without property following a divorce.

I’m aware of women who have been told by bishops to stay with husbands who may have been abusive. I believe (but I have no evidence or direct knowledge) that some bishops have withheld or threatened to withhold temple recommends from people who did not try hard enough to stay in a marriage, and it is usually the women who suffer more from this. So while we may not often quote or use this verse directly, it does cast a shadow over our culture. I would prefer that bishops do not try to exert this kind of influence.

“Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” Luke 16:18, King James Version.

This quote has given many people serious concerns.

There are several reasons why some of these concerns are incorrect, which are addressed in this essay.

As a noted [a] Evangelical Scholar has pointed out, the King James version has some flaws in translation (discussed below).

As the Bible notes, there are several justifications for divorce, which Paul discusses.

Still, divorce is not a light thing.
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1. The King James translation has some flaws in rendition.

To quote Paul Young:

“In Luke both the verbs “divorce” and “marry” are in the present tense. The parallel in Mark 10:11 puts them in the subjunctive mood. In Hebrew the force of the expression would have linked the two actions together in continuous motion: kol hasholeach et eshto venose acheret noef …

Perhaps in English one could better capture the meaning of the saying by translating it, “Everyone who divorces his wife [in order] to marry another commits adultery.” ([] in origional) From Divorce and Adultery in Light of the Words of Jesus, Paul Young in Jesus (Hendrickson Publishers, ISBN 1-56563-060-2. Also visit http://hakesher.org)

Note how Mark 10:11 reads:

“…Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery.”

Reading the verses in Luke, using proper parallelism, the rendition is more likely proper as:

“Everyone who divorces his wife in order to marry another commits adultery, he that marries the new wife commits adultery, the same is true if the woman putteth away her husband in order to marry another.”

But, to quote Paul Young (at page 116) “No one should attempt to lesson the force of a powerful saying of Jesus. When a man abuses the law and divorces his wife in order to marry someone new — it is the same as adultery.

Thanks for the wonderful quotes and thoughts from everybody! Flymetothemoon, I liked the link, but it seems they are saying Jesus was giving a “higher” law, and we are not ready for it. After ready all the comments, I’m leaning toward a mis-translation and very disappointed that the JST did NOT correct it (said with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek). I think Marsh’s quotes from Paul Young make the most senses.

Some more interesting context from the Harper Collins NRSV Study Bible. It’s definitely a response to the reasons that men put away women in their culture as has been mentioned above:

‘5.32 Except on the ground of unchastity (cf. 1 Cor 7.10–11). This “exception clause” (not in Mk 10.11) is an interpretation of an ambiguous expression in Deut 24.1, “something objectionable” (Hebrew ‘erwat dabar, lit. “nakedness of a thing” cf. “anything indecent,” decent,” Deut 23.14). Some first-century Israelite teachers interpreted it to mean “a disgrace and/or some other thing,” thus permitting a man to divorce his wife for almost any reason, even burning the dinner (Rabbi Hillel) or not being as beautiful as another woman (Rabbi Akiba); cf. Mishnah Gitin 9.10; similarly Josephus, Antiquities 3.276–77; Life 426; Philo, On the Special Laws 3.30–31. A more restrictive interpretation was that it referred specifically to her “unchastity,” i.e., adultery (Rabbi Shammai; cf. Mishnah Gitin 9.10). The Greek term porneia in Matthew means any form of “sexual immorality,” not just adultery; yet, since the Matthean statement is polemical (“But I say to you”), the author’s single exception (unchastity) may have meant adultery. In Mk 10.11 there are no exceptions, therefore no grounds for divorce; this was probably the historical Jesus’ view (cf. 1 Cor 7.10; Justin, First Apology 15.3). Paul also softened Jesus’ view, allowing non-believers to “separate” cf. 1 Cor 7.10–16. The Matthean author apparently preferred the position of Shammai.’

Matthew 19:8
“He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
Maybe because of the hardness of our hearts, our present day Moses suffers us to put away our wives/husbands.

The discussion is great, and I’m all for crowdsourcing ideas, but if you’re ever uncertain of how General Authorities have treated specific scriptures, might I suggest starting with the scripture citation index from BYU. You just find a scripture, and it gives you general conference talks that have cited that scripture. From there, I got this excellent quote from a 2007 general conference address from Elder Oaks:

“In ancient times and even under tribal laws in some countries where we now have members, men have power to divorce their wives for any trivial thing. Such unrighteous oppression of women was rejected by the Savior, who declared: [quotes cited scripture]

“The kind of marriage required for exaltation—eternal in duration and godlike in quality—does not contemplate divorce. In the temples of the Lord, couples are married for all eternity. But some marriages do not progress toward that ideal. Because “of the hardness of [our] hearts,” the Lord does not currently enforce the consequences of the celestial standard. He permits divorced persons to marry again without the stain of immorality specified in the higher law. Unless a divorced member has committed serious transgressions, he or she can become eligible for a temple recommend under the same worthiness standards that apply to other members.”

1) The man is not to leave his wife to marry another, with one exception: if she fornicates with a different man. So basically any man who gets a divorce for any other reason besides infidelity on the part of his wife and then marries a different woman, is committing adultery.

2) It is adultery for a man to marry any woman who has ever been divorced (and put away, means that women at that time were not allowed to initiate divorce), for whatever reason.

No we don’t follow this. And thank goodness we don’t. Jesus, in this regard, was simply not enlightened. Cultures throughout the world have improved greatly in regards to divorce than Jesus’s injunctions on the matter.

I’m not trolling. Read what I wrote. The reported speech of Jesus on divorce and adultery transmitted to us through the various authors and editors of the NT is simply morally wrong and I can’t imagine anyone in the modern West disagreeing with this.

Simply put, men and women who remarry after divorce should not be considered adulterers simply because they remarried after divorce. Do you disagree?

The explanations in comments are excellent; in particular the rendering that divorcing one to marry another already chosen is forbidden.

It does make it difficult for a divorced woman in the church to find a new husband, also there’s a tendency among sisters in the church to shun divorced women. My wife (before she was my wife) divorced her abusive husband. Subsequently she was treated like a leper at church; as soon as sisters in Relief society learned she was divorced they tended to move away from her so it appears that few people “ignore” that verse.

So when I married her and considered myself a fortunate man for doing so, there are those that suppose *I* have committed adultery. So be it. You are my judges only in mortality.

“How does the church justify this?”

It is a secret ritual involving orange juice at the spring equinox at sunrise in the shadow of the angel Moroni atop the temple.

Rockwell explains “I was preemptively saying ‘there is no we’ because Michael 2 wouldn’t have to”

Thank you for that recognition. But I still feel compelled to include that when someone includes me in a belief statement that is not accurate. Having married a divorced woman I am quite familiar with that scripture. The spirit and miracles surrounding this marriage and the birth of our daughter tells me I did not offend God or Jesus.

M.S. Brothers writes “This essay confronts the fact that Jesus made clear in the Bible that no one is married in the hereafter, which is extremely inconvenient for LDS doctrine.”

There is no inconvenience. Read the whole story. Return and report. Or not.

She won’t be married to any of them for eternal marriage did not exist at that time on Earth. If she is sealed, it will be to her first husband, except under unusual circumstances. Jewish customs of the time are not binding on God or heaven.

John W., I was thanking you for how you commented, not challenging you.

I was contrasting that to your long history of pretending to be a hyper-orthodox member who wants to exclude anyone from being considered a believer if they don’t think the Book of Mormon is a 100% historical text.